Internet security company AVG just released a study that looks at the safest and most dangerous places to be hit hit by a malicious computer attack or virus.

According to the study the most dangerous countries for web surfers is Turkey with an average of 1 in every 10 users face a threat to be hit online, followed by Russia 1 in every 15 users, Armenia (1 in 24) and Azerbaijan (1 in 39). While some of the world’s safest surfers can be found in Japan and Taiwan and seven of the 10 safest countries in which to surf the Internet are in Africa.

AVG said in a press release that data was taken from 144 countries, involving over 100 million PCs ( i think mostly Windows based), enabled AVG to look at the incidence of security threats that its software had to deal with in the last week of July. From these figures, AVG came out with an average for attacks per user per country.

USA is at number nine when it comes to the riskiest places to go online where 1 in 48 people were hit by an attack , UK is ranked 31st (1 in 63), Australia 37th (attack ratio = 1 in 75) while German web surfers come in at number 41 (1 in 83).

Sierra Leone had the fewest attacks with on average one in 692 web surfers facing an attack, Niger is second and Japan third with one in 404 facing an attack, is arguably the safest place to surf the net.

As per continent the safest continent is Africa (1 in 108), and by a long way South America (1 in 164), North America scored 1 in 51. In Europe 1 in 72, while in Asia (including Asia Pacific) 1 in 102.

VG spokesperson, Roger Thomson attributed the risks to a number of reasons,” the tendency to access semi-legal or illegal download sites, while some of it probably is down to being less cautious when it comes to sharing links and files online. Another factor is the popularity of Internet cafes and people generally sharing computers. However, it is safe to say that even in these countries, a minority of users account for a large proportion of attacks.”

Thomson cities that the low attacks rates in Japan to the country’s broad-band high penetration rates and that Japanese web surfers are generally more aware of safe and risky surfing behaviors.

As for Arab countries, the numbers are: Iraq 1 in 49.6, Oman 1 in 54.9, Iran 1 in 55.4, Qatar 1 in 56.3, Yemen 1 in 64.9, Kuwait 1 in 74.6, UAE 1 in 80.5, Jordan 1 in 98.0, Saudi Arabia 1 in 110.5, Syria 1 in 181.4. The Global average is 1 in 73.